Drone, Drone on the Range?

“No true sportsman will say with a straight face that hunting or scouting animals with a drone or aircraft is fair to the animal or to other hunters in the field.” That’s the anti-drone kvetch from Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ Wyoming chapter Co-chair Buzz Hettick. [Press release after the jump.] The Laramie resident made his remarks after The Cowboy State’s Game & Fish Department set its sights on a drone ban as a hunting aid. If implemented, it would bring the number of statewide drone hunting bans to nine: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming. Fair enough? Or is this another case of Luddite Fudds trying to stop the signal? . . . .

Laramie, WY -(Ammoland.com)- A sportsmen-led campaign to uphold fair chase hunting in Wyoming is gaining momentum with the Wyoming Game & Fish Department’s recent decision to consider a new rule outlawing the use of drones or aircraft for hunting or scouting.

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ Wyoming chapter initiated the effort in the wake of numerous reports of aircraft, as well as a growing number of drones, being used to locate and pursue big game in the Cowboy State.

“No true sportsman will say with a straight face that hunting or scouting animals with a drone or aircraft is fair to the animal or to other hunters in the field,” said Wyoming BHA Co-chair Buzz Hettick, who lives in Laramie. “Yet Wyoming big game regulations currently have loopholes that leave the door open to the use of drones and aircraft for hunting.”

While existing state statute outlaws scouting wildlife from a plane and then hunting within 24 hours, the new rule change would strengthen these regulations and specifically ban the use of any drone or aircraft to hunt or scout.

Hettick continued, “We greatly appreciate the Game & Fish Department listening to the concerns of Wyoming sportsmen and clarifying this language to uphold our tradition of fair chase hunting – without the interference of unnecessary technologies.”

“After hearing numerous reports of hunters abusing drones and aircraft to pursue animals on Wyoming’s wide open landscape, we realized that something needed to be done,” said BHA member Jeff Muratore of Casper. “I commend the Game & Fish Department for taking action to protect our wildlife resources by making sure hunting regulations are in line with the state statute, which is intended to prohibit the use aircraft for hunting.”

BHA state chapters have initiated and led a national grassroots movement to ban the use of drones in scouting and hunting and uphold the principles of fair chase, principles that are central to BHA and to hunters and anglers all over America. BHA has successfully facilitated drone bans in Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Vermont and is currently working to implement bans in New Hampshire, New York and Oregon. Illinois and West Virginia have followed in banning drones, as well.

If adopted in Wyoming, the new rule would take effect in the fall of 2016. The public will have an opportunity to comment on the measure; details should be made available shortly.

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers is the sportsmen’s voice for our wild public lands, waters and wildlife.

Learn more about BHA:

Visit our website.
Connect with us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
About Backcountry Hunters & Anglers

For more information, please visit www.BackcountryHunters.org.

comments

Not being a hunter, can someone please explain why this is a big deal? Unless you’re actually mounting a gun to the drone I don’t see the problem, and this is coming from a guy who thinks bear baiting is indefensible.

I tend to agree. I don’t’ see how other people using drones ruins a Fudd’s adherence to tradition. Those with the drones are only going to fill their tags. I don’t see why it needs to be harder for other people.

Because the people with the drones can cover much more ground in pursuit of the few 6×6’s out there from a lawn chair at camp whilst drinking the crappy beer these lard-butts seem to prefer on their hunts.

Big game tags take some time to draw, and your chances of filling a bull tag with a large 6×6 are slim, and are often dependent upon your ability to get into thick timber in high country will largely depend on how good a horseman you are, or how fit you are in working your way in on foot. Most of the early season bulls will be in the high country in wilderness areas, where you can’t take any wheeled vehicle. Taking a drone in there for scouting is simply not fair to those who are adhering to the rules, and the noise of the drones will likely stir up the game and push them deeper into the thick timber, making for a harder hunt for everyone (including the button-pushing sloths using the drones).

I think your impression is correct – hunting and punching through brush in pursuit of big game is a challenge that many at TTAG haven’t tried. They also might not realize how much fun local guides have with hunters who are out of shape. Or who can shoot 1-2 MOA all day off a bench but can’t shoot a rifle offhand.

True, I haven’t hunted yet. This week may give me an opportunity to finish the class needed to get my license here in CA. Now all I will need is time to actually let my buddy take me hunting.

It still seems like an arbitrary limit set for what advantages are acceptable. How about a limit set on the size of deer one can take while scouting with drones? Would drones be acceptable for use in monitoring and studying game populations? And if so, wouldn’t the same problems apply?

Riding a horse is also not easy, it takes allot of mental and physical work, it’s not like on TV where you just sit on it and ride somewhere. You have to know what you’re doing otherwise you’ll get thrown, stomped, or not go anywhere.

Riding a horse is the single best way to get your ass broken in two on a hunt there is around here.

I know people who have been riding since they were five years old. They grew up on a ranch just up into Montana. They’d get on their horses and ride away from home for 3+ days at a clip when they weren’t in school. They know literally everything there is to know about riding horses in rough terrain. They hunt from horseback – and they’re good at it. But even they occasionally have wrecks that break legs, ankles, arms and ribs – and they’re been riding for 50+ years.

Since packing out an elk on my own back takes at least four round trips back to the trailhead, I’ve asked where I could get training on riding a horse in rugged terrain. Want to know something? There is no place you can get such training. None. And this is in Wyoming, where it seems every third house outside of town has horses in the backyard. This lack of “learning how to do it when you’re older, and didn’t grow up on a ranch” is because it is dangerous and no insurance carrier will insure such an operation. You can find carriers who will insure a polo farm, but not an operation teaching people how to ride in rough terrain.

Dyspeptic is right on this. As someone who has put time and effort big game hunting I often laugh at the incredibly out of shape road hunters driving their 4 wheeler in big circles all day and then drinking hard and getting up “early” at 830 to make a heaping breakfast, then repeat until they go home with a headache an empty wallet and no meat or rack for the wall. Drones are lazy men’s dreams. If it’s not fair chase and ethical shooting then why even hunt? Don’t reward the lazy. If I ever saw one up hunting I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot it down.

I really don’t think this would have been a problem. I looked into these for some friends in South Africa so they could monitor their concessions for poachers. The ones with any real range were extremely expensive.
It would be cheaper to hire a plane and have a non hunter relay coordinates via radio.

Hunting is a sport depending on who you are and if you’re surviving by hunting either as a hunter or its a job, i.e. being a guide. In some states it’s a right, but not all.

I have no problem with using drones to spot game to help the guides or using drones to watch the property. Using drones to take out animals? No, bad cricket. I wouldn’t actively attempt to ban it though because banning stuff doesn’t make the world better.

I will say though, if I met someone who said hunting was delicious murder, I would slowly step backwards and flick off the safety. Little disturbing, especially if said with a sense of relish.

Well, thats your opinion. In my opinion its murder and once a year I allow myself to express that part of my personality. People who think that some killing is moral and some is not actually scare me. Killing is killing. We all do it, the least you can do is be honest about it. IMO its when people draw arbitrary lines that true evil happens.

If we all do it as killing is necessary for life, then killing cannot be inherently immoral. If every animal must do it, it’s no more a sin than breathing. Even fundamentalist Jains recognize that killing is necessary. Even if one accepts the argument that plants are “lower lifeforms” and killing them is morally superior to killing animals, most vegans are not aware of the killing of animals that goes along with farming crops. Though some have thought it through and became hunters, such as Tovar Cerulli. Pests must be controlled by killing. Small animals in the field are killed by farm equipment. Honestly, you will do the least amount of killing for food by killing large animals for food. You will also have the smallest impact on nature and wild animals if done so in a responsible way. The land stays wild and the animals lead natural lives, except for a proportion which will be preyed upon. Prey species have evolved as prey and that is their natural state they have adapted to. They generally have abundant fertility as a reproductive strategy. In most cases the predators have been removed from the area and human hunters fulfill the same role, but more humanely. It’s less cruel to shoot a deer dead in seconds than to be torn apart alive by wolves over hours or days. Humans are the only predators that kill their prey before eating it. However, I think that wolves have a right to live as wolves, too, and I would let them kill to live.

I scare you by making a moral distinction between slaughtering my gently raised chicken or harvesting wild deer and mass murder of human beings? People with your opinions are the truly terrifying ones. Follow your line of thought that all humans are evil for simply living, whereas animals get a free pass to kill everything, and you end up with the radicals that want humanity to go extinct to protect “mother Earth”. Enemies of human life itself.

I sincerely hope you’re just trolling, because the idea that someone could view an activity as murder and yet still voluntarily take part in it is, quite frankly, one of the most terrifying things I have ever encountered.

I can see why chase drones would be banned, you can’t use chase dogs either. I’d love to be able to scout open areas for turkeys from the truck before stalking off into to woods to creep and crawl looking. But that’s part of the hunt and the enjoyment. Some of the best story’s are where the deer,bear,turkey wins.

I think the reason they ban chase dogs is because you could easily bend the rules with dogs, like using them to tree or corner animals when no one is looking. You certainly can’t do that with a drone. And unlike dogs, drones can’t sniff out animals, so I don’t really see the problem.

Yup, “No true sportsman” &ct. We hunters are guardians and conservationists, taking the role other predators (them we killed off) used to have in the old days. We manage the numbers of animals nature can support, that’s why there is quotas on how many we can harvest. How we do it shouldn’t be a concern for the legislature, and we pay for the privilege of managing animal population anyhow.

I’m not sure I completely support it, but I understand that the government may make laws against private armed drones for the same reasons they have laws against armed aircraft. I think that setting a precedent that “flying killer robots” aren’t for civilians might be OK with me. Such weaponry goes beyond firearms, and is much less precise than firearms.

Drone scouting for hunting restrictions should probably be put into place on a local level. In areas where there is a lot of pressure on deer forbidding it may be a just wildlife management decision. In other areas where there is an overabundance of wildlife (areas with “nuisance deer”, etc.) allowing drone scouting would help increase the harvest which would aid in reaching wildlife management goals. And in wilderness where the harvest is just a drop in the population bucket or subsistence hunting is practiced, there’s no reason to make it more difficult for hunters to harvest game.

I believe that if you’re hunting for “sport”, you do whatever you want to do, restrict yourself however you see fit. If you’re hunting to put food on your family’s table, you’d be foolish to not use every advantage available to you.

I love to hunt and being that I am not dependent on filling my tags, I personally wouldn’t use one. I also wouldn’t look down on anyone who does use them. There are many reasons I can see people using them….needing to fill their freezer,being handicapped, ect…
I guess as long as they use them respectfully, who am I to judge?

Anything goes, I guess. I’ve applied for tags for the upcoming season in October and am now busily engaged in manufacturing my own drone-deployed daisy-cutter in hopes of getting a world-record elk, if the rack stays in one piece.

No ethical problems with that.

Sarc, duh.

Maybe they should establish a one-day game killing season, and leave the longer hunting seasons to the rest of us actual hunters.

I do not need to hunt in order to put food on my table. This makes it very important to me how I go about doing it. I like my simple longbow for 4 legged critters. I also realize that we live in a free country and some people will choose an easier route. I do not begrudge them this fact. The drones on the other hand take it to a whole new level, and I am strongly against their use as a scouting tool. Scouting with a drone is another example in the continued pussification of the hunting community as a whole. It is a continuing degradation of fieldcraft which we will lose more and more of as time goes by.

You are precisely right. I don’t know anything about drawing an arbitrary line in the sand to say, “THIS level of technology is acceptable, but THIS level of technology is not!” If you wish to have your own “code of the hunt” that you follow so you can feel superior to those lesser men who do not follow such rules, go ahead. But demanding that others MUST follow this arbitrary distinction which is guided entirely by personal preference (rather than any moral, ethical, or legal argument) is, quite frankly, silly.

I think it is a question of fairness…fair chase, and fair to those other hunters not using a drone, helicopter, infrared, airplane, mortar fire, etc. to spot/track/harass/drive/harvest game, given the resource belongs to all the public. Or, we could just throw out all the rules, all just claim “just poor me filling the freezer as I see fit”, and there wouldn’t be much left for anybody to hunt after a short while. Pretty clear technology and greed can outrun the resource if given free rein. Big “No” to drones.

OK you (or Barney FIfe can use their model airplane toy/drone above and while looking at PUBLIC property. But, any citizen may engage with fire any such drone. Those below 100ft AGL at shotgun only And no drones man be armed. $5 bounty per drone to be paid by the local chapter of the demtard party.

No, let the local chapter of the RepubliOnePercent party pay the bounties. It’s only fair—they will be the ones building, selling, and using the drones. Shucks, they practically invented the phrase “unfair advantage.”

I seem to remember a rule in Alaska saying you can’t hunt the same day you fly. Hunters who come in by plane get an unfair advantage so the law makes them wait a day to keep things even.
A similar rule for UAV’s could be ok, but tough to enforce. UAV’s could be used to scout like using Google Earth, or aerial photos before that, or topo maps before that. They shouldn’t be used to locate a specific animal and immediately go after it. Here in CA, treeing switches and GPS dog collars are not allowed as a way to prevent armchair hunting. Same thing.

I think using a drone to go after something varmints or pest animals such as hogs or coyotes should definitely be allowed. A drone could be a very useful tool in tracking down groups of wild pigs. I’ll leave the debate for proper game animals to people who do hunt.

On high fence private land, people should be able to use them. But once you talk about public land hunting, with draws for tags, you arent just competing against the animal. You are also competing against the other hunters who paid their money, waited, and got lucky. If you want the challenge, take the challenge of a public land hunt and skip the drones. If you want less of a challenge, or just less chance involved, pay for a private land hunt and do whatever.
I say this, of course, having some of my easiest hunts ever be on public land, but I just got lucky. My hardest hunts have been on private land under high fence. Those fences just happen to be around over 10,000 acres of south Texas mesquite and cactus.
Eradication is an entirely different thing. Use sharks with lazer beams dropped from tornadoes if that’s what it takes to kill the pigs.

It’s a slippery slope anytime you start talking about what the government should or should not “allow.” Therefore, I’m for them, though I’ll most likely never own one and almost certainly never use it to hunt.

I don’t know that I fully understand what’s wrong with using drones. As far as I’ve seen, there are two primary objections:

1. It’s not sporting or fair.
The problem, as I see it, is where to draw the line. Drawn to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking would have us ban the use of guns, bows, knives, or any other tool in hunting, as animals do not use such tools.

2. It would make hunters too effective and lead to over-hunting.
But isn’t this the ENTIRE POINT of putting limits on how much game someone is allowed to take? If I’m allowed to X bucks in a season, does it really matter if I manage to shoot them all on day one or if it takes the entire season? Though in reality, I also think these people SEVERELY overestimate the range of personally-owned drones…

Have you ever been elk hunting on public lands? Drones would be incredible in helping people find the perfect bull. No effort, follow the gps on your drone drive up on your 4 wheeler walk a hundred yards and light him up. The big Bulls would have buzzing around him night and day. What ever happened to hunting? Reading signs, being stealthy, getting up at first dawn etc. Why not go shoot your cow at the local ranch? About the same level of “sport.” Finally the drones range is only going to get better. My friend has one that can go far out of sight and return via gps. Still sound fair? As for your last point. Most tags are not ever filled. State wildlife divisions carefully watch and know the average hunters success. What you seem to want is not even close to sporting. If you think so then why not just open up on that herd of elk with a bmg a half mile away? Or for that matter take a 155mm cannon and blast the herd from two miles away. They got it coming anyway.

Well, besides the fact that such tactics would carry a high risk of collateral damage and would thus be irresponsible to the extreme, it’s also highly likely that such an attack on a herd could bring down more animals than would be legal, and our hunter would therefore risk getting fined.

Also, your comment about the tags’ limits is self-refuting. If drones really did help people be too effective, the numbers would simply be lowered, ensuring over-hunting did not occur.

As for why not simply shoot a cow instead, do you seriously not realize that beef and venison taste different from each other? If my primary purpose is to gather meat, rather than to engage in a pastime, why would I concern myself with how I acquire it, so long as the method is not immoral, unethical, or illegal?

You have obviously never been hunting and secondly don’t understand sarcasm. The point is that your drones would turn hunting into a video game with the best drones equalling the best success rate. Why don’t you just have a rancher raise deer so you could shoot them. That will give you the taste and thrill of killing if that floats your boat. Sounds about as fair as using a drone. The point is that using a drone is highly unethical. Go hunting and come back and tell me it’s not. The animals should have a chance to escape with drones it’s highly unlikely.

And you obviously don’t understand rational arguments. You make excellent points as to why you, personally, would not want to hunt using a drone, but then you try to use those same arguments to argue that NO ONE should be allowed to hunt using a drone. The one does not logically follow from the other. Also, your assertion that “using a drone is unethical” is unsupported. In what way is it unethical to use technology to help you hunt, and in what way does that same argument NOT apply to your weapons?

The fact also remains, as others have pointed out, that using a drone wouldn’t even give as much of an advantage as you seem to think it would. You mentioned reading signs to track your quarry? With a drone, you’d pretty much be relying entirely on spotting the prey visually. This will be rather tough if the animal is not moving or is under a leafy canopy. After the animal is spotted, the hunter still has to make his way to where it is, making sure not to scare the animal away as he gets close enough to take a shot. Meanwhile, he either has to collect the drone or else leave it hovering there as a beacon to any other hunters in the area that there’s game there. Drones may give a hunter better chances than he would have had without the drone, but I’d still put my money on the guy who’s skilled in more traditional methods of tracking.

My primary concern with many of the anti-drone comments on this page is that they essentially boil down to, “Hunting is great, but only if you do it my way. It doesn’t matter if you still kill the animal swiftly, with minimum suffering. It doesn’t matter if you’re being responsible with herd sizes and making sure you don’t over-hunt. What matters is that your chosen technologies to take with you are different from the ones I would choose, and I should get to decide what everyone uses.”

Is that really any different from the antis saying, “I support the second amendment, but only if you use the guns I approve of, in the places I deem acceptable, with only as much ammunition as I allow”?

Answer my question. You ever been hunting? Not robins in the backyard. Hunting in the west in big country where distance stops lots of hunters. As for your point maybe you don’t understand logic 101. My point has been stated many times clearly and you obviously can’t follow it. When is enough technology enough? Hunting using something flying and not connected to your body is far from ethical. By your logic using drones to shoot the offending deer or elk would be ethical. Why not an Apache or a warthog? How about the big guns off the Missouri? By your logic it makes a perfect literal argument. If drones are good, why not gps missles with heat seeking tips? Or is it that you just have a different tech level threshold then I do??? Do you really think guys are going to bust there ass with hard work using traditional methods when they can fly a drone that can see blood trails, heat signatures, even computer models that would point to where game would logically be? Don’t take much logic to see what 90% of the public would do. I am an absolutist when it comes to the 2nd amendment but hunting is not what the 2nd is about, never has been. Save your drones for tyrants. It doesnt take massive technology to kill a deer or elk. Rocks spears and atlatls have been doing it since time immemorial. If you want an executioners squad so be it but don’t expect the vast non shooting public to understand your absolutists stance.Growing up in the west has taught me to appreciate the animals who feed me and give me warmth. They deserve my respect enough to give them a fighting chance. We’re not fighting nazis or I.J.N. Kamikazes. It’s not ethical and all of you who can’t unders it need to actually fill out a tag and go hunt an animal. Not theoretical, but really do it.

No, I have never been hunting, nor do I have any desire to do so. Once again, you state “Hunting using something flying and not connected to your body is far from ethical,” yet you simply assert this claim without any supporting evidence. The primary problem with the examples you give of technology going too far, beyond the aforementioned issue of collateral damage, is that in most of those cases very little of the meat/hide/etc would be left in usable form. Beyond that, why WOULD I object to any of those methods, provided the hunter is following a few simple guidelines?

1) No laws should be broken.
2) The animal should not suffer unnecessarily (e.g. don’t shoot when you know for a fact the shot will simply wound rather than kill, don’t set traps that will be rarely checked and will cause animals to starve…)
3) Animal populations should not be over-hunted.

And again, you dodge the question of why we should allow certain technologies, but not others. You yourself stated that rocks and spears have been used to great effect, so does this mean we should ban rifles and bows, as they might give some hunters an unfair advantage over those who prefer to hunt with shorter range weapons?

“Do you really think guys are going to bust there[sic] [***] with hard work using traditional methods when they can fly a drone that can see blood trails, heat signatures, even computer models that would point to where game would logically be?”
Firstly, I was under the impression most places already banned using thermal imaging for hunting, so I’m not sure why you’d mention it here (though for the record, I’d be fine with its use in areas where using it is not against the law).
Secondly, from reading the comments it sounds like there are quite a few people who feel the way you do, so yes, I think there will still be quite a few people using more traditional methods to hunt.
Finally, even if the vast majority of people started using newer methods rather than traditional, would this necessarily be a bad thing? Provided we don’t allow over-hunting to occur, why would we care?

Anyway, I think we’re getting to the point where we’re both starting to just re-hash the same arguments without providing new information, so I’m out. Have a good night, and happy hunting, however you decide to do it. 😉

What is this fascination with attributing magical powers to quadcopers? People have been flying RC model aircraft for decades without such paranoia. When I fly mine, I’m doing good to keep it under control in the wind and over my own property without losing it into the neighbors’ trees. Burning through 5-7 minute battery life doesn’t leave much room to range very far afield.

I suppose if someone has a military surplus predator laying around I could understand. But, short of that, get over the “drone” paranoia.